Curtain Call
by Frea O'Scanlin
Summary: CI News: Our favorite sweetheart of the screen, Sarah Walker, has a new man! The actress, 28, is hard at work on the newest in her high-grossing Midnight franchise, and we hear more than sparks are flying on set with the mysterious Chuck Bartowski... AU
1. Chapter 1

**A/N the First**: To those of you that have never seen this story before, the great **mxpw **and I have been writing on it for awhile over at our blog. But much to our distress, not everybody reads on our blog, so we thought we'd share this story with the world, just for the fun of it. We'll be posting a chapter a week. A lot of thanks involved in this chapter: thanks to our readers for choosing this story, thanks to our friends for putting up with our random musings about this story, and thanks to the hours of TVs and movies that have made this story possible!

**Disclaimer**: Neither **mxpw** nor I own anything past this line, and we're definitely not using any of it for monetary gain.

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><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

The cell looked dank, and cool and Agent Martina Royce shivered as though the cool air were actually biting into her skin. She still wore the fancy dress she had been captured in, a dress that didn't exactly leave much to the imagination. For one thing, it showed far too much leg. Well, really, it showed far too much of everything, but she was more bothered about the leg. Wearing revealing outfits had always been one aspect of the job that she had never been thrilled about, but she knew it was a necessary evil.

A man paced in front of her. She'd memorized his details a long time before: good looking, with short dark hair, a firm chin, and pale blue eyes, average height. He wore a well-fitted tuxedo, and had been Royce's target at the party she had attempted to infiltrate.

Royce had screwed up, she knew that. She'd been captured, drugged, and woke up to find herself sitting on a chair, her hands cuffed behind her back.

Her target had been interrogating her for what felt like hours. "I won't ask you again, Agent Royce. Where's the flash drive?"

Royce gave her interrogator a steely-eyed glare and spat at the man's feet. "Go to hell."

The interrogator walked up to Royce and struck her across the face. She remembered what she'd been told and timed her flinch just right. Even so, the interrogator clucked his tongue. "I am very disappointed to hear you say that, Agent Royce. I had such plans for you."

Royce worked her jaw. It took her a few seconds to compose herself. When she did, she said, "You might as well kill me. I'll never tell you what you want to know."

The interrogator walked slowly toward her. He leaned in close and his breath ghosted across her cheek. It smelled like onions and chili. It almost made her want to gag. Damn it, not again, she thought. Every single time. How was she so consistently unlucky? Did people not realize what they ate for lunch affected other people as well?

She tried not to let her distaste show, but it was hard to maintain her facade. She was not very happy and she planned to express that unhappiness at the first chance she got.

"You will tell me everything you know, Royce." The interrogator then smirked. Royce hated smirkers. "Everybody talks eventually."

That was her cue. It was time. "Okay, okay," Royce gasped out, "I'll tell you what you want to know."

The interrogator nodded his head, as if he expected as much. She wanted to shake her own head at the predictability, but just did her best to look vulnerable and like she had given up.

"Tell me everything, Agent Royce. Where the flash drive is, who the double agent is, and everything you know about Project Genesis."

Royce swallowed and acted like she was trying to speak, but nothing came out.

The interrogator leaned closer. "What was that?"

Royce waited until the interrogator was again in breath-smelling distance and then head-butted him. The man flopped backwards, his head moving just in time, and landed on the ground, clearly dazed.

"I said, 'You should have killed me when you had the chance.'"

Then Royce made her move, pulling her hands free from the handcuffs that she had—

Nothing happened.

Her hands didn't break free from the cuffs like they were supposed to. All she did was jerk a little and then wobble to one side, almost pathetically. She tried again: nothing. So she bit her bottom lip and looked to the side. "I'm stuck. Uh, help?"

"Cut!"

Immediately, the tension from the "cell" drained as though somebody had cut a line. Though she knew it was hopeless, Sarah tried to pull her hands free again. She then laughed. She couldn't help it. It was the third time the prop cuffs had failed to work. She saw her day—already long and exhausting without all of the setbacks—stretching out for hours longer.

David Reynolds stalked onto the set, a severe scowl on his face. "I'm sorry, Sarah. I talked to the prop guys and they assured me they had the problem fixed." He turned around and she didn't have to see his face to know he was glaring at the crew, who had, once "Cut!" had been called, immediately sprung into action to reset back to the first mark. The props guy, standing to one side, sheepishly pulled his baseball cap off and scratched his forehead.

Somebody appeared behind her and freed her from the prop cuffs, never saying a word. After nodding her thanks, she massaged her wrists and adjusted her dress so that she didn't inadvertently flash the crew.

"I don't get it," David said. She couldn't tell if he was talking to anybody in particular, but she doubted he was. David had a tendency to direct his wrath at as many targets as possible. He was generous like that. "They're prop cuffs, people. How hard could it possibly be to get them right? I can get a working pair from the Halloween store down the street! Why do I even pay you people?"

"Sorry about that, Dave, it's the mechanism, we may have a new pair in the trailer..."

Sarah carefully stood up and let the crew's noise and chatter wash over her, ignoring comments about barn doors and kickers. She needed, she decided, to have a serious talk with the costume department about her dress. They needed to at least give her tape or something. She was supposed to fight in this thing? She'd have to ask Angelica how she did it.

David just shook his head as the props guy scurried away, muttered under his breath, and turned back to her. "We're going to have to take it from your headbutt of Bruce again. I liked the energy and the disdain in that last scene, see if you can work up a little more of a sweat before the next time, or if we can get make-up to add more...more schvitz." He gestured at his forehead, which was sweaty like hers, though she doubted it was anything to do with the sticky, smelly spray the make-up department used for synthesize sweat. "While we're working on this, take and go over things with Stefan and Angelica for scene eighty-five. Hopefully the cuffs will work, and when they do, we're going to go right into Royce's escape, got it?"

"Sounds good."

"Let's move it, people. We needed this shot finished yesterday! Clock's ticking!"

Essentially dismissed, Sarah gathered her loose hair and pulled it into a messy ponytail. One of the PA's brought a jacket over to her and she quickly snuggled inside of it. That was much better.

She turned on her heel to start walking off set, when she stopped and nodded her head. She had promised herself that she would say something and she would. She refused to let this go like she had all the other times in the past. Oh, and she was definitely leaving a note in Craft Services' suggestion box.

She marched over to her scene partner and smiled at him. "Great work, Bruce."

Bruce grinned at her and spoke quickly to the girl retouching his makeup. He focused back on her, still grinning. "Thanks."

"One thing though. If you're going to have a chili dog for lunch, please, please, please eat a mint afterwards."

Bruce's grin faded, the skin around his eyes tightening. "I'll try to remember that."

Sarah smiled gratefully at him and said thanks. Then she went off in search of her stunt team. She figured it couldn't hurt to go over her fight scenes one more time.

She didn't notice the new PA, a hire-on from the day before, slip out and follow her, keeping pace the whole time.

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><p>When his cell phone rang, Chuck dug it out of his pocket and pressed "Talk" without looking at the viewscreen. "Yeah, Ellie, I'm on my way back, I promise, just running a bit late because I couldn't remember if you said mixed greens or—"<p>

"Bartowski!"

At the sound of his boss's voice, Chuck nearly dropped his phone. Should've checked the viewscreen, should've checked the—

"I don't give a damn about your salad. Are you in L.A.?" Bullworth always tended to remind Chuck of a less-charismatic J. Jonah Jamison, but never as much as when he was barking orders into his phone. Give him a cheap mustache and a cigar, and he might as well step into a comic book, though Chuck had never, ever dared to say that to his face. Frankly, he didn't say much to his boss. He liked having a job, after all.

He juggled the salad and the tomatoes now, trying to get a better grip on his phone. "Uh, yes. Yes, sir, I am. On vaca—"

"Good. It's about damn time something went right. I'm having the computer nerd replacing you for the week send you an address. Go there. Handle it."

"Sir, I'm technically on leave and there are several more qualified..."

The dial-tone cut him off. Chuck slowly lowered the phone, a scowl setting in. He'd put in for this much-needed vacation, a chance to rest and recoup and spend time with his friends and sister, over six months before. But Bullworth evidently didn't believe that the Agency really granted time off, something that didn't surprise Chuck in the slightest. Bullworth lived and breathed only when the Agency told him to, and he fully expected that his staff would do the same.

Technically, Chuck had grounds to ignore Bullworth. He was, after all, on approved leave.

He knew better than that.

So, scowling, he tossed the salad into the front seat of the rental car, climbed into the driver's seat, and rested his forehead against the steering wheel. Thankfully, it wasn't as blisteringly hot as it had been earlier that day; Los Angeles had cooled down some. After a moment and a deep breath, he raised the phone and hit Ellie's speed-dial number. She was laughing at something her boyfriend must have said as she picked up. "Don't tell me you got lost already, Chuck!"

"No, not lost. Just a mixup with the salad." Chuck's fingers flexed against the steering wheel.

Ellie must have heard something in his voice. "What is it? Is there trouble?"

"No, no trouble. Ah, my boss called."

"Oh." Ellie's tone went flat; Chuck agreed with her opinion of Bullworth, though he didn't say so. "What is it now? Do you have to be at the office?"

"He doesn't want me to fly back to D.C., but there's an issue out here. I just have to take care of it really quick."

"Chuck, you're on vacation."

It was a bit ironic to hear that from a doctor, and Chuck waited until Ellie realized it herself.

"Oh, all right," she said with a sigh. "Will it take long?"

"I hope not. You know what? No. No, it won't take long. I'll handle it quickly." One of Bullworth's friends was probably just having a computer error and instead of calling the Buy More, they'd gone to the "Bullpen" of nerds. Bullworth had the most computer nerds on his staff out of every department of the Agency, after all. Granted, he had a full coterie of field agents, too, but he wasn't as well-known for them. "But yeah, don't hold dinner on my account."

"All right." Ellie still gave a disappointed sigh. "You need a new job, Chuck."

"I know."

"I'll leave a plate in the fridge for you if the issue takes too long."

"You're the best, Ellie. Thanks."

"Good luck."

Yeah, Chuck thought, after he'd bid her good-bye and hung up. I'll need it, probably. He checked his messages and saw that Scott, one of his fellow nerds, had left a text for him: Sorry, C! Bull's in mood today, here's address, ask for Neil.

There was an address listed. Chuck transferred it over to his GPS app, figured he was only about twenty minutes away if traffic wasn't too brutal, and felt considerably better. Maybe he could get home early enough to hang out with Ellie and her boyfriend, after all. Put in some quality time with Morgan and Halo or something.

It apparently wasn't his lucky day. An accident on the freeway made the whole drive drag out to nearly an hour, so that by the time he reached the address, his fingers tapped against the steering wheel impatiently, and he was all but jiggling in his seat. He pulled up to a gate and rolled the window down. "Uh, I'm not sure, am I in the right place?" He listed off the address.

"Yeah, that's right, but it's only authorized personnel in the studio lot."

"Stu-studio lot?" Chuck blinked and glanced at the gate. There were several warehouse buildings on the other side. The nearest seemed to loom up for miles. What on earth sort of issue had Bullworth sent him to fix? And how the hell had he not noticed what it was before now? He'd grown up in L.A., after all. "Oh. My boss sent me here. I'm supposed to ask for Neil?"

Whoever this Neil was, his name was powerful enough to get Chuck a security pass and through the gate with directions to head to Studio 18, about a mile back on the lot. Bewildered now, Chuck clipped the badge to his T-shirt and climbed out of the rental car. He should have gone home to change, he realized. He was wearing Chucks, for crying out loud, jeans, and a T-shirt with a fake Bass Pro Shops logo that said, "All Your Ducks Are Belong to Us." It was probably the least professional he could have looked.

"Bullworth is going to kill me," he muttered under his breath. "I am so officially a dead nerd."

He headed for the studio entrance, asked the guard once more for Neil, and received directions to go inside, but to be quiet, there was a shoot in progress.

What the hell?

Inside, a blast of air conditioning slammed into him so hard that he nearly shivered. He stepped from concrete to concrete and closed the door behind him, looking around. As far as he could tell, there wasn't any sort of organization, though the warehouse—studio—was one huge room. What he assumed had to be scenery pieces were stacked haphazardly against the wall nearest the door, and most of the activity was concentrated on the opposite side of the studio, where a set looked like some sort of prison cell. Huge lights flooded the set and people milled about, but even among the buzz of activity, Chuck sensed a feeling of waiting, like they weren't sure what to do next.

A young woman with a harried expression and a clipboard rushed up to him. "Can I help you?"

"Uh, yeah. I'm Chuck Bartowski, and I'm supposed to ask for Neil?"

"Neil's talking to the cops right now."

"Oh, I can wait." Just his luck, Chuck figured. He really wasn't going to be home until very late, and at this rate, he could see the rest of his vacation slipping through his fingers.

"You're not the guy from ILM, are you?"

"I wish, but no."

"Jaime!" Another woman, also carrying a clipboard, sauntered over. Well, Chuck thought, she sauntered, but she still seemed to move quickly without seeming to move at all. He would have to learn that trick. "Who's this?"

"He says he's here for Neil, but he's not the guy from ILM."

"Oh, you're with Bullworth?"

Chuck nodded. "Chuck Bartowski," he said, sticking out his hand.

"Vanessa Perone," the woman replied. "I'm one of the producers on this project, and I'm supposed to keep an eye for you for Neil. Since he's in a meeting right now, though, I can take you straight to her."

"I'm sorry, her?"

"Did Bullworth not fill you in?"

"Uh, I got some details, but..."

"Well, they haven't found the guy that did it, but the cops have kept the crime scene pretty well preserved. Thank God she wasn't hurt, we're behind enough on production as it is and David's close to pitching a fit." Vanessa Perone rolled her eyes and started doing that speed-saunter away. After a second, Chuck realized he was supposed to go along, and hurried to catch up. "This is just a nightmare. We've got security, and like I said, thank God she's been paying attention to the fight coordinators, but if word gets out about this event...well, it'll be good for publicity, but I don't want to see the royal bitch-fit David will throw."

"Uh-huh," Chuck said, hoping he sounded like he knew what was going on. What has Bullworth gotten him into?

"If you ever go into the business, be careful about the artsy directors. David's damn good at his job, but if the smallest thing is wrong..."

They headed out of the studio through another set of doors, winding their way around various people in ballcaps and cargo shorts carrying cable, lights, colored sheets of some sort of gel, and more cables.

"And thank God Neil had some connections, so that this can be handled quietly. Such a frickin' mess. Well, here's her trailer."

They had indeed come to some sort of mobile park trailer, set in among a small village of them. Security milled around, sweating a bit in the heat. They gave Chuck a few curious glances, but nodded at Vanessa, evidently used to seeing her around.

Chuck wondered if anything would ever make sense again.

Meanwhile, Vanessa was talking too fast for him to insert a word in edgewise. Right now, though, she stopped and gave him an appraising look. "Good job with the blending in, throw a pair of gloves in your back pocket and you could be one of the grips."

"Um, thank you?"

"She's not too temperamental, so you shouldn't have any problems. Just don't get in the way of shooting, listen to the PAs, and it should be okay. Thank you for coming so quickly."

"No problem."

Vanessa turned and knocked twice on the trailer door. Chuck heard a muffled "Come in!" before Vanessa pushed open the door and went in first. Feeling even more at sea, Chuck followed her up to the tiny steps, taking care not to trip.

Inside, it was considerably darker, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the light. He was standing in some sort of miniature living room, with a couch and a coffee table and everything; there was a door to what he had to assume was another bedroom just beyond them. "Sarah?" Vanessa called. "Come on out and meet your new bodyguard."

"Wait, what?" Chuck said, just as the door to the bedroom opened. Then he completely forgot everything he had ever known, up to and including his own name.

Sarah Walker was standing in the doorway.

Sarah Walker, movie star. Sarah Walker, actress. Sarah Walker, goddess.

Sarah Walker, whom Chuck had fallen in love with during a matinee showing of It Came from the Swamp when he was just seventeen. Her IMDB page had said she was eighteen at the time, and that they had filmed the scene where her character had been dragged into the swamp thirty-seven times, but had used the first take.

And here he was, nearly ten years later, standing in her trailer. And oh, God, she was even prettier in real life and how the hell was that possible? "Don't," Chuck heard himself whisper, "freak out."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Thank you for all of the wonderful, wonderful reviews that were left on the first chapter! Sorry I don't have much to say here right now (I started a new job yesterday and my brain is fried), but **mxpw** and I really do appreciate all of the feedback people have given our li'l old tale.

We'll try to keep up the "partial good work," we promise. )

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><p><strong>Chapter Two<strong>

"Vanessa," Sarah said as she stepped into the living room of her trailer, "I don't need a bodyguard."

Vanessa held up her hands. "Sorry, Sarah, but Neil was pretty insistent. You know how he is."

Sarah did know and so she just sighed. She made her robe a little more secure and then turned her attention to the tall man standing next to Vanessa. He looked out of place in her trailer, tall enough that he had to duck forward. And he lacked about 50 pounds on any other bodyguard Sarah had ever seen. Most times, the firms sent ex-military types with the buzzcuts and the bad attitudes that hid behind permanent scowls and sunglasses.

None of them had ever looked completely gobsmacked, or had been this lanky. None of them had certainly ever worn canvas sneakers like that, not unless they were going for a run with her out by the pier. And even then, they'd always had earwigs to counter the casual look.

This man simply didn't look like a bodyguard. If she had to quantify him at all, he looked like a nerd.

But Neil's orders were Neil's orders. She'd put up with it...for now. So she stuck out a hand. "Hi. I'm Sarah Walker."

"Uh," was all he said.

She waited a few more seconds, her hand still out. She tried to motion with her eyes for him to take her hand, but he just maintained that stunned into silence look.

She pulled her hand back and twisted around to look at Vanessa. "Are you sure he's supposed to be my bodyguard?"

Vanessa looked perplexed as well. She glanced at her clipboard and then shrugged. "Said he was with Bullworth and that's who Neil said was sending somebody over."

"And he speaks English?"

"Seemed to be speaking it just fine a minute ago, Sarah."

Sarah looked from the producer to the erstwhile bodyguard. "I see," she said, and wasn't sure what to do next. She'd never actually broken anybody before. Sure, there were the fans that embarrassed themselves horribly in front of her. She'd had one person drop to his knee on the spot and propose marriage to Carly Banks, a chemist she'd played a few years before that had netted her first accolades. Some people went suddenly shy. But never before had there been this sort of stunned-stupid expression.

"Can we see about maybe getting me a new one?" she asked Vanessa. "I appear to have broken this one."

The producer looked puzzled for a minute, shrugged to herself, and then delivered a solid smack right between the shoulder blades of the stuck man. Unlikely Bodyguard jerked forward with a noise that was somewhere between a shout and a yelp, blinked as though coming out of a long sleep. In an instant, his face went from slack to smile, and the change was so quicksilver that Sarah nearly blinked.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking from Vanessa to her and then around the trailer as though in confusion. "I think I just hallucinated something. Where am I? Never mind that, actually. Sorry, if this is a dream, it's an incredibly rude one. I'm Chuck Bartowski. Bullworth sent me."

This was said very, very quickly.

Sarah did blink then, but stuck out her hand. "Like I said earlier, I'm Sarah Walker."

"No you're not."

""I...beg your pardon?"

"You can't be Sarah Walker. Because if you're Sarah Walker, that means I'm standing in Sarah Walker's trailer and...oh, god, you're Sarah Walker."

Sarah had dealt with a lot of strange requests from Neil over the years, but this was the first time he'd ever made her deal with a crazy person. "I see," she said. "Vanessa, can you get Neil for me?"

Vanessa was already reaching for the cell phone clipped to her belt. She pressed the phone against her ear.

"Wait!" Chuck blurted out into the trailer. "I'm sorry," he said and took a step forward, then stopped. "This is just a huge shock to me and not what I was expecting at all. I mean, two hours ago I was supposed to be on vacation and eating dinner at my sister's and suddenly I'm in Sarah Walker's trailer and oh my God, I still can't believe you're standing in front of me right now."

Thankfully he paused then and took a breath. She was about to tell him that it was alright, she understood, and perhaps it would be better for all of them if this Bullworth sent somebody else, when he started up again.

"But just out of curiosity, I noticed on my way in that this studio is still using the PTX-90s and I wondered why you hadn't made the change to the 91s? They have much better nightvision and motion capture capabilities than the 90s, allowing for much faster processing. Also, do you store your media on site or by proxy, because I'd really like to go over the footage for the last six hours and see if we can't find who attacked you, Miss Walker."

Vanessa held out her phone. "I've got Neil, Sarah."

Sarah locked eyes with Chuck.

"I can speak with him if you like," Chuck said, surprising her. "I'm sure there's just been a mix—"

"Yes, sir?" Vanessa asked into the phone, interrupting Chuck and making both actress and bodyguard look at her in surprise. The tone had gone from grudging to businesslike, always a clue that something had happened on set. With the way things had been going lately, Sarah had to figure out that something had David's name all over it. He was a brilliant director, not too hands-on, letting her do a lot of the work, but he could be temperamental as hell when the issue had nothing to do with his actors. She didn't envy Vanessa for being the producer to run interference; the rest had washed their hands of David early on in the project. "Yes, sir, I'll be right there."

She snapped the phone closed. "Bad news, kids. One of the 2ks blew, David's pitching a fit, and we're going to just wrap early for the day and hope to make up some of the shots tomorrow. I'll double security around the trailer, you stay in here, and we'll sort this out in awhile?"

"Sure, Vanessa," Sarah said, but the producer had already hurried away, letting in a blast of California heat and leaving the trailer door swinging shut behind her. Left alone with Chuck Bartowski, Sarah realized just how very, very awkward this whole situation was.

He was doing that thing where he was trying to look at her without staring, and he was doing it poorly. Right now, with Vanessa dealing with other things, he was her problem. And her grandmother hadn't raised her to be impolite—hadn't really raised her to be anything, at all, but that was neither here nor there—so Sarah cleared her throat. "Do you need a drink or anything?"

He looked startled. "You're letting me stay?"

"Vanessa's orders. I've got, um...I think there's some Cokes? I know there's water, sparkling, still, whatever."

His adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, hard. "A Coke would be nice. I can get it, though. You should, um, sit down or something. Are you feeling okay? They said you got attacked?"

"It was nothing. I've had worse on set." That was mostly the truth, she had suffered worse injuries on set before, though nothing had ever captured the sheer mind numbing spike of fear that had stabbed into her stomach when the new PA had assaulted her. She still wasn't sure how she had fought him off. The only thing she could think of was that the hours of fight training she'd received over the course of her career had ingrained some kind of instinctual response inside of her.

Chuck peered at her closely and she looked away. "Look, I'm fine," she said. "Just a few bumps and bruises, I really think Neil's overreacting."

"Still," Chuck said, and he didn't sound remotely convinced, "maybe you could go over exactly what happened?"

"You should probably sign an NDA first," Sarah said, uncertain. She had kept most of the details of her life out of the press only by sheer determination, and she wasn't about to start babbling all of them off now.

"You can trust me," Chuck said, and crossed to the mini-fridge in the corner to pull out a Coke and a water.

"And how do I know that?"

"Because I'm more afraid of my boss than I am of you."

That was not the answer she was expecting, especially since Chuck Bartowski had basically shut down like a robot right in front of her not five minutes before. But he seemed sincere now as he perched carefully, putting as much distance between him and the other side of the sofa as he could. Warily, Sarah sat down on the opposite side. "I'm not sure if I believe that, Mr. Bartowski."

"I'd meet my boss before you make claims like that. Look, I'll give you my..." Chuck patted his pockets, searching for something. "I'll give you my contact information, you can call references that'll tell you that not only am I trustworthy, but I'm also fantastic at..." He stopped talking, abruptly, in the middle of his sentence and just stared.

Oh, crap, Sarah thought. I broke him again.

She let out a sigh. Put that way, Chuck did sound more trustworthy than most of the slimy Hollywood types she stepped over every day on her way to work. And she had no idea what else they could possibly talk about while waiting for Vanessa's orders to lift and for the new bodyguard to arrive. So she started from the beginning.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N the first**: Thank you, everybody, for the wonderful reviews. Although I have to wonder about one thing: people realize that Sarah Walker is an A-List movie star in this, right? And that Chuck's had a crush for over ten years now? So him freezing up really kind of makes sense to me. I mean, I'm sure I'd keep my cool meeting Zac Levi or Yvonne. Yeah, totally.

(Okay, I'd be gibbering, and possibly gushing. Also genuflecting. These parentheses are brought to you by the letter "g")

**mxpw **and I appreciate every single review left here and on the blog. Stay classy. And to the people holding CaptMediocre hostage, make sure you don't feed him after midnight. Or get him wet.

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><p><strong>Chapter 3<strong>

Despite her hesitance to start, once Sarah did, most of her reluctance disappeared.

The words came out in fits and spurts, spinning a pretty basic tale. Sarah had been on her way to the makeup trailer. She'd been attacked, grabbed from behind. Using some of the hand to hand combat techniques she'd picked up working with fight coordinators, she'd wiggled free and gotten away. All in all, it was kind of an impressive tale...or Sarah had gotten very lucky. She sat on the other end of the couch in her too-small trailer, wearing her bathrobe, and looked far more more impressive than even Sydney Dunham had after she'd saved Beijing's subway system from a string of pipe bombs set up by the mad Dr. Laszlo.

Chuck, on the other hand, was just grateful he had seen enough cop shows to know it was a good idea to record everything when interviewing somebody. If he hadn't hurriedly fished his iPhone out of his pocket, who knows how much he would have missed. As it was, he knew he was going to have to listen to it multiple times before sending his report to Bullworth.

Still, he could recall enough off the top of his head to have a good idea of where to start.

"How tall was he again?"

"He was a couple of inches shorter than you, I think." He watched as her eyes moved up and down his body. He couldn't help feeling a little self-conscious. Sarah Walker was giving him the once over, would his life get any stranger?

He hummed contemplatively and tried to remember other details. Lean body, she had said, and a faded scar on his right cheek. Brown hair, kind of short, possibly like a gladiator's. She hadn't had a good look at his eyes, thanks to sunglasses.

"When we're done here, I'll talk to Security about checking their surveillance for any sign of your attacker, Miss Walker." That sounded like something a bodyguard would say, right? God, he was in way over his head. He knew Bullworth liked the hands-off managerial style, but this was ridiculous. What was he even doing here?

Sarah sighed and leaned back on the couch. She stared up at the ceiling, her incredible blonde hair tumbling backwards like a cascading waterfall. Chuck had to shake himself a bit to knock his concentration back into place.

"I don't even know what the big deal is," Sarah said. She folded her arms across her chest. "It was probably just some psycho fan that snuck onto the lot. It happens."

Chuck was leaning that way himself.

"It was just a crazy fan," Sarah repeated. "Sometimes they see me and they snap." Chuck wasn't sure if she was trying to convince him or herself.

Chuck had his own doubts. After all, he'd probably consider himself one of her oldest fans, and while he was sure he'd drooled on himself like an idiot and probably a dozen other embarrassing things, he'd never thought about hurting her.

And if it was a stalker or just a delusional, albeit violent, fan, he wasn't sure what Bullworth expected from him. He was a tech geek. He worked with machines, data, other socially maladjusted individuals every day. He'd put in the transfer request for field agent status a million times and he'd had all the training, but since he'd never actually been in the field, he had no practical experience with anything like protecting somebody.

Too valuable where he was, Bullworth would always say. Normally he felt a little bitter about that fact, but now that he was actually in the middle of a field assignment, all he could think about was the safety of his cubicle. He wasn't sure he was ready to pull off his best Kevin Costner impression.

Clearly Bullworth only meant for all this to be temporary. Chuck figured that this Neil guy must be golfing buddies with some pretty important people, as it was the only reason he could think of for Bullworth needing somebody immediately. As far as he knew, studios had their own security for this sort of thing, didn't they? Of course, studio security had ended with them in this predicament, so maybe that wasn't something to be relieved about. Either way, Bullworth probably had a plan. Maybe. That thought comforted him, as it meant he wouldn't actually be responsible for the long-term safety of the Sarah Walker. He was just a stopgap.

God, she was so pretty.

He blinked and realized he'd been drifting. Sarah was even looking at him pointedly; he flushed. What was wrong with him? Could he embarrass himself in front of her even more? First he'd been a babbling idiot and now this? She'd probably rejoice when Bullworth eventually sent somebody to take over for him.

"Crazy fan or not, I'll do what I can to help find the man responsible." There, he hoped that sounded suitably confident and professional. "Though from what you've told me, your conclusion is probably the most likely reason."

"At least somebody here listens to me." Sarah shook her head, clearly frustrated. "I tried telling Neil that, but he never listens."

"Well, you're Sarah Walker," Chuck said, and despite his best efforts, a little bit of awe still slipped into his tone. "I'm sure he just wants to keep you safe."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "I've got a whole platoon of guys standing around my trailer. It's not like whoever it was is going to get through them." Then she set her jaw and passion filled her eyes and he suddenly felt a little warm because damn, it was an attractive look on her. He'd seen that look more than once on the silver screen. It had always been one of his favorite things about her. "I don't need a bodyguard. I'm sure you're very qualified, but I've never needed a bodyguard before and I don't see any reason to start now."

"To be honest I'm a little confused about why the police aren't handling things."

"Again, Neil. I'm sure of it."

Chuck nodded his head, not really sure what that was supposed to mean. "Alright, well, um, I guess I'll see if I can't get out of your, um, hair. I'm sure you have important stuff to do."

"Vanessa put us on house arrest, remember?" She arched an eyebrow.

He flushed slightly and gestured with his hand toward the door of her trailer. "Like you said, your trailer is surrounded. I can't protect you if I'm stuck in here."

Truthfully, he just needed some time away from Sarah so he could actually think rationally about everything she had told him.

She only shrugged, so he smiled at her and turned around to leave. "Oh!"

He spun around a little too fast and almost toppled over. Oh yeah, he was great bodyguard material. "What? What's wrong?" He scanned the trailer for signs of any attacker. There was nobody there.

"I just remembered something!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. He called me the Cat for some reason. I forgot about it till just now." She frowned and bit her bottom lip. "I know he was crazy, but I'm not even up for Catwoman. You'd think a stalker would be a little more on the ball about something like that."

As soon as Chuck heard Sarah say "the Cat," he blocked out everything else. What the hell? That didn't make any sense. He knew that name. Hell, everybody knew of the Cat. What was some run-of-the-mill stalker doing calling Sarah Walker the code name of one of the CIA's most infamous agents?

It was probably just a coincidence. Right? It had to be.

"What's that look?"

Chuck startled and realized that Sarah was staring at him. He immediately tried to cover. "What look?"

"That look!"

"I don't have a look!"

"Yeah? Because it looks like you recognized the name. What does it mean?"

Chuck backed away from Sarah, suddenly feeling a strong desire to run. "Uh...Selina Kyle?"

"Right." Her tone stated she clearly didn't believe him, though he couldn't help but be impressed she even knew the name. As if he weren't enough of a friggin' fanboy already.

He tried another tactic. "It was nothing, I swear. I was just thinking how lucky you were that you took your training so seriously when you were preparing to be Sydney Dunham."

"Oh." She peered at him closely. "You're not a very good liar, you know that? Never go into acting."

The trailer door opened, killing any need for a response to that. Chuck spun, Coke bottle raised high. Vanessa stepped inside, took one look at him, and just raised an eyebrow. Chuck sheepishly lowered his improvised weapon. "Sorry."

Vanessa shook her head, but evidently decided to let it go. "Bad news, Sarah. I talked to Neil and he says Mr. Bartowski has gotta stay with you 24/7 for the time being."

"What?" both of them blurted out at the same time. Sarah continued: "This is ridiculous!"

"I'm sorry," Chuck added. "I just hallucinated again. What?"

"Neil said you'd say that," Vanessa said, once again ignoring Chuck. "He also said you didn't have a choice. It's part of your contract."

"It's what?" Sarah looked genuinely surprised.

"Yeah. Insurance purposes, apparently," Vanessa said. She shrugged. "For the time being, wherever you go, he's gotta follow."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: **Here it is, the next chapter of _Curtain Call_. **mxpw **

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 04<strong>

She'd expected it to be more awkward.

And it was awkward, certainly. There just wasn't any way letting a total stranger into your life as a bodyguard could ever be considered a smooth transition. Letting a total stranger who was obviously a fan, no matter how cool he tried to act—and he was a terrible actor—into her life was worse. And letting said stranger in without any advance notice whatsoever made the whole situation vaguely hellish, like the time she'd spent shooting in southern Louisiana in a mansion with no air conditioning...in August.

But it could have been worse, and for that, she was grateful. Chuck at least seemed polite. The fact of the matter was, neither of them appeared to have the first clue what was going to happen now. She herself was still a little shaky from the brief and furious fight that had had no stuntmen involved, and as for Chuck, well, it was hard to get a read on him. They'd made it out of the studio lot without any major incidents, and out to her home.

"So this is it," she said, pushing open her front door. She didn't bother to turn on the light to the front entryway, as the wiring didn't really work in there, anyway. "Home sweet home."

To his credit, Chuck didn't immediately speak. She held the door open for him to come inside and then closed it after him, setting the security panel by the door out of habit.

After a minute, Chuck finally did speak. "So, you're in the process of moving, or..."

"Nope. C'mon in, I'll give you the ten cent tour." Sarah dropped her keys on the unfinished table by the front door and strolled into her house, which still looked depressingly similar to the way it had been when she had bought it. And her realtor had called it a "fixer-upper."

Boxes, tarps, buckets of paint and painting supplies lay like fallen soldiers all over her foyer, leaving a small path open from the living room to the dining room, which led to the kitchen. All three rooms shared the same depressing state of emptiness and lack of personality. She'd intended to start the actual fixing up of the place upon moving in about fourteen months before, but the first Sydney Dunham movie had been a smash hit, and she hadn't had a day off since.

"So this is the dining room," she said, leading Chuck through.

"Um," Chuck said.

"What?"

"Well, uh, how can you tell?" His eyes swept over the piles of boxes and the raggedy sofa that had somehow managed to follow her from her very first apartment after her father's arrest.

"Tell what?"

"That it's a dining room? There's no table."

"I don't really eat in," Sarah said, and headed into the kitchen before he could follow-up on that comment. "In here's the kitchen."

"I see you're a master chef," Chuck said after a few seconds of staring around at the dusty countertops.

Sarah bristled. "I gave the maid the year off."

"That wasn't—I didn't actually—that wasn't a comment on your housekeeping abilities, I promise. I can barely work the microwave without something exploding, myself."

"I'm really not home a lot," Sarah said. "Through that doorway's the garage, and I use that if I'm taking the bike out."

"I'm sorry, the bike?"

But Sarah barreled on with the tour, leading him into the breakfast dining room, which would someday be a beautiful area with French doors and a lot of natural light—if she ever got a day off. She pointed out the back patio and the pool, currently drained. From there, they headed into the living room, and Chuck's jaw dropped.

"What?" Sarah asked.

"Do you realize you've got room for a basketball court in here?"

"I do not."

"Half-court, then." Chuck turned slowly on the heel of one of his namesakes. "And not a single stick of furniture."

"There's a piano."

"Oh. Right. Do you play?"

"No, it came with the house. The upstairs is a little better, I promise." After all, she'd managed to get at least one room semi-finished—a great old kick-back room—before her unexpected bout of fame had taken off. "More actual furniture, for one thing."

"I see you're very sentimental," Chuck said, glancing at the blank walls. "You don't, like, collect things from your sets, do you?"

"Not really?"

"So, you didn't even take home the golden chalice of—"

Chuck did that thing where he started choking in the middle of his sentence. He'd done it three or four times already, which was the only reason Sarah didn't immediately think of the Heimlich anymore. She wondered if he would do that the whole time, or if this would be another thing he'd get over. He hadn't broken like he had in the beginning in nearly two hours. So far, it was a record.

"What I mean to say is that you should maybe think about some paintings or something for the walls here? Seems a shame with all this space. Maybe some lilies would be nice."

"Lilies," Sarah said, her tone dubious.

"Or roses. I'm told those are pretty, too. You know what? I'm going to stop putting my foot in my mouth any moment now, I swear. Um, how tight is your security here?"

"My agent had the system installed when I insisted on getting this place. He swears it's top of the line."

"Do you have the manual lying around anywhere, by chance?"

Sarah stopped in the middle of the staircase and turned to give him a strange look. "You want to read the manual."

"Um. Yes?"

"I've never met anybody who's _ever_read the manual. To anything."

Chuck flushed and scratched the back of his neck. "Well, uh, now you have. I read the manual for everything I own. Up to and including my washing machine. The one for my toaster was kind of dull, but the blender? Now that was, uh, riveting stu—look, I'm just going to come out and say it before I screw it up anymore: I'm a nerd. I play video games. I can quote 'Wrath of Khan' backwards _and_forwards. I kicked so much ass at Scholar Bowl that my team went to state both years I was part of it, and yes, I helped out on Stanford's electrical car team. Bullworth and Neil may have sent me out here to, uh, follow you around, but I'm not exactly orthodox. I'm a nerd that does nerdy things."

"Like read the manual," Sarah said, blinking. They were still standing in her stairwell, and thanks to the faulty wiring and the fact that evening was fading fast, it was mostly dark, so that she could only make out a few details about Chuck's face, but he seemed earnest—and worried—enough. He was a couple of steps below her, so his neck was craned to look at her, or right next to her, as he couldn't seem to look at her without thinking he was staring, apparently.

"Among other things. And I'm going to keep embarrassing myself over and over, so it's probably best you know all of that up front."

"What's 'Wrath of Khan?'"

Chuck actually whimpered, like he was in pain.

Apparently, Sarah thought, she wasn't the only one who had some adjusting to do. After all, he couldn't even look at her properly. She had actress friends that complained about their bodyguards, that hated the restrictions. She'd never really been there herself, but she didn't think any of them had ever been in this sort of situation.

"So you're a nerd," she said, turning and heading up the stairs.

Slowly, Chuck followed her. "I, uh, yes. That's correct."

"Are you good at your job?"

"At my job?" Chuck looked puzzled when she glanced over her shoulder at him. "Well, yes. Actually, I'm the best at it, which is why I'm...still there. And probably why I'm here right now."

"Then who cares if you're a nerd?" Sarah led the way into the den, the room where she spent ninety percent of her time at home. It was situated between two of the bedrooms upstairs, a common room of sorts. She'd carpeted it and had bought considerably nicer furniture for the area: sofas, a divan, and an old-fashioned writing desk that she'd seen on set once and had bought from the owner on the spot. There was a dusty flat screen along one wall; her agent had insisted that she have somewhere to watch movies, though she liked sneaking anonymously into a theater for those. "The den."

Chuck's eyes lingered on the desk. "It's nice."

"The guest bedroom's through here," Sarah said, crossing the room and pushing open a door. "My agent stays here occasionally, so it's fully functional. There's a bathroom through there, and fresh sheets in the closet."

"Awesome. I thought I'd just be bunking on a couch or something. Where, ah, where is your..."

Wordlessly, Sarah pointed to the other door. "And it will be locked."

"Of course. I, ah, that's very smart. I would expect nothing less." But Chuck frowned. "That could be a problem in the event that you're attacked, though."

"I'm sure you'll figure something out. I'll give you the code for the security system and dig up the manual. Anything else you need? There's some snack food in the fridge, help yourself. We'll leave about four fifteen."

Chuck's eyes bulged. "In the morning?"

"I have an early call time tomorrow, and with half of my scenes today cut, it's going to be a long day, so I need some rest." And she needed to think, and decompress, and get away from this whole crazy situation for a bit, even though Sarah was well aware she wouldn't sleep for hours yet. "So here's where I'll say good night."

"Oh. Okay. Um, good night, then." Chuck paused awkwardly, as if he wasn't sure whether to shake her hand or pat on her on the shoulder or something. In the end, he evidently decided to just turn on his heel and march into the guest bedroom. Sarah waited a few seconds before she headed into her own room, which shared a bit of the same depressing state as the rest of the house.

Until, that was, she heard Chuck ask, "Sarah?"

Fortunately, he'd relaxed enough around her to stop calling her Miss Walker every time he addressed her. This situation was strange enough without adding that to the mix.

"Yeah?" She stuck her head out into the den.

He had his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his shoulders up around his ears: sheer nerves. "I'm, um, I'm glad you're okay. And not because I'm a fan or anything, but because I just am. Nobody should ever have to go through what you did today. Good night."

And he vanished.

Well, Sarah thought, oddly touched. That was interesting. She closed her bedroom door behind her and even though the threat about the locked door had mostly been an empty one, locked it. After all, she was sharing her house with a virtual stranger, even if he came with Neil's blessing. Her first priority was to hop in the shower and scrub away her day: the long hours of shooting, residual makeup and that annoying fake sweat, the residue of the real sweat from her actual attack, the pollution and smog from Los Angeles. She took care of her nightly beauty regimen, which was always a little dull, but necessary since her face paid the bills. She printed out call sheets, reviewed the script pages for the next day's list of scenes. And finally, she checked her phone, expecting that word had probably gotten out about the attack by now.

She had only two missed calls: one from her agent, probably just checking in, and one from a friend who wanted to do lunch on Saturday.

Yeah, right, she thought. Not if she still had a bodyguard tagging along. She was going to wait awhile if Chuck stuck around to introduce him to any of her friends.

Maybe if filming didn't go until four a.m. on Saturday, they'd head out to a winery or something, get away from the bustle and grind of L.A. It was probably as much alone time as she was going to get, with another person shadowing her 24/7.

What a weird, weird situation.

As if answering her thoughts, Chuck's voice drifted through and she glanced toward the double doors that led off to the balcony shared between the two rooms off the den. Was he talking to himself? She pulled a bathrobe on over her nightgown and wandered closer until she could hear better.

"Yeah, Ellie, I'm really sorry about that. Do you want me to talk to him?" A pause.

Oh. Chuck was on the phone, apparently.

"Wait, he's still there? He never left? Oh, God, I'm sorry. I didn't realize. Yeah, put him on the phone, I'll talk to him." There was a pause. "Morgan, buddy, we've talked about this. Yeah, no, I know, but the rules were if I'm not there for two hours... Yeah. Is she giving you the look? No, I won't be back soon, I got called in to work. No, not back in DC. I'm still out here. No, I can't. Work's got me tied up, I can't get away right now. In fact, I won't be able to, not for awhile. Bullworth's got me on something special."

There was another long pause. "Well, I guess my vacation just got cut short. Not a lot I can do about it at the moment. Look, you can take anything you want you from my room, but you should probably get out of there before Ellie calls the cops. And give her phone back to her before you leave."

What on earth? Did Chuck have a kid? And who was this Ellie? The only thing Chuck had mentioned about his life was that he was a nerd; she hadn't even considered that he might be giving up something to shadow her.

It unnerved her a little bit, but she didn't move away from beside the door.

"Yeah, Ellie, I'm sorry about that. And I am really, really sorry for missing dinner. You probably should just toss the plate you left for me. Bullworth...yeah, I know, I know, I need a new job. This time it's a little different, but I'm not going to be home for awhile. I know. I'm sorry. Can you give my ticket to somebody else? No, not to Morgan, I wasn't suggesting that. I wouldn't do that to you. I'm in L.A., yes, but it's going to be hard to get away. I'll call you if I can, though."

Another pause, this one the longest so far. "Yeah, I know. I get it, I do. And I'm sorry, but there's not a lot I can do about it at this point. I'd better go. I'll call you when I get a chance? Okay, love you, too. Bye."

From her vantage point, Sarah heard Chuck sigh, and then finally, the creak of one of the patio chairs she'd left on the balcony a few months back. A few second later, there was the unmistakable tap-tap of laptop keys. He'd driven them both to Sarah's house, a good way to avoid the stalkerazzi that wouldn't know to look for Chuck's rental car, so he had a few things like his laptop, but...

She was going to have to get the man some clothes, Sarah saw. If he was going to be tailing her 24/7, any time he needed something, she would probably have to be there until the studio lifted this ridiculous injunction against both of them.

Forget awkward. This was, she realized, going to be a pain in the ass.

* * *

><p><strong>AN the Second**: Those of you that wonder why Sarah hasn't touched her house at all, I posted her IMDB page on my Twitter and Tumblr accounts. Sarah hasn't been living at her house at all, barely. Some of her latest projects have been an indie film in Vancouver, nine months of filming in Europe for a _Game of Thrones_-type television series with a break in the middle (she wasn't in an episode) to take a role in _May December Bromance_, and she started principal photography on _Black Midnight _basically two days after she returned home from that. Next chapter, things get innnnteresting.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N**: Sorry about the lack of an update last week. I wish I had a better excuse than "I forgot," but...okay, my dog ate it. For being small, stocky dogs with no snout to speak of and a weird habit of sneezing backwards, Boston Terriers sure eat a lot. Thanks for the wonderful reviews, everybody.

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><p><strong>Chapter Five<strong>

Chuck had tried to sleep, he really had. He'd counted sheep, he'd counted bytes, he'd stared at the ceiling in vain for over an hour. He'd recited Riemann's zeta-function as a Mellin transformation backward and forward. When that hadn't worked, he'd listed all of the primitive and reference types in every single computer language he'd studied.

None of it helped. He had just been too full of nervous energy to sleep, despite how exhausted with everything he really was.

He was in Sarah Walker's house, staying in her guest bedroom.

Sarah _Walker_.

She was sleeping in her own bedroom. Her own bedroom, he corrected himself, that was no more than 20 feet away and he was supposed to sleep, knowing that?

Yeah, right.

So after trying and failing to fall asleep, he had given up and decided that if he couldn't sleep, he'd at least try to be productive.

The first thing he did was log into the CIA mainframe, using his own account for once. Most of the nerds in the office played a game where they hacked each others' accounts and ran idiotic searches in the database for the sheer hell of it, but tonight, he wanted to keep his facts to himself. He ran a search on Sarah, the movie she was working on, and the studio, to see if the Agency had red-flagged anything that might explain the attack. The more he thought about her attacker calling her the Cat, the less of a coincidence he believed the attack to be. Unfortunately, he didn't expect to find anything. As amazing as Sarah was, the Agency wasn't in the habit of keeping tabs on Hollywood starlets.

While the search ran, he brought up his work e-mail, hoping for some kind of message from Bullworth or at least one of his friends in the office. Preferably one thanking him for handling things, but another agent would be taking things over from now on.

No such luck. The only thing in his inbox were the usual work e-mails. As they were routine, it took only a few minutes to deal with them, and a couple minutes more to remote into Jenkins's computer, fix a bug, and leave a memo on the desktop that perhaps Jenkins should avoid exploring his fetishes at work in the future. By the time he had finished, his search on Sarah popped up. No results. No surprise there.

Undeterred, he shot off an e-mail to a friend at the FBI who owed him a favor, asking him to run their own search. A simple insinuation that it was for a bet, and that there might be a case of Glenfiddich in it for the winner, should keep said FBI snoop from putting together that Chuck Bartowski had somehow landed himself the enviable role of bodyguard to a woman on _People_'s Sexiest Actresses list.

By that point, it was only two in the morning, a couple of hours to go before Sarah had told him they had to leave. They hadn't even made him wake up at four in the morning at Camp Peary. Perhaps acting wasn't as glamorous as he'd thought.

Still full of too much energy to try sleeping again, he used his access to the DST mainframe to download a PDF of the specs and manual for Sarah's security system. He really was a nerd, he mused, as he settled in to read.

* * *

><p>Over twelve hours later, Chuck found out that something he had never thought possible could indeed be true: he was bored. He was on the set of a major motion picture; a movie starring his favorite celebrity and the woman he'd been crushing on for years, and he was bored.<p>

If something didn't happen soon, he might actually pass out from sheer boredom.

He just had nothing to do. They wouldn't let him look at the cameras or the lights or anything, really, so he couldn't sate in his innate curiosity whenever around new technology. They wouldn't let him get closer to the set when Sarah was filming, so he had to stand back with the rest of the nonessential members of the crew, and could only see Sarah perform from afar. All he had done pretty much the entire day was follow Sarah around—after, of course, he had signed about an entire ream's worth of paperwork saying he wouldn't say anything about what he saw. They'd been thorough, covering every type of media source from CNN to Facebook. At one point, Chuck was positive they'd asked him to sign away his firstborn. He'd signed.  
>He was pretty sure for Sarah Walker, he'd sign anything, as pathetic as that probably made him.<p>

As for Sarah—she was certainly beautiful, and they'd gotten along a little better than they had the day before, but there just wasn't enough time for conversation. Sarah, he learned, was almost always in motion. She even ate lunch on the move, between costume changes and getting rigged up into stunt gear. He had no idea how she did it.

He considered himself to be relatively in shape. He knew he could do better, but after his time at Camp Peary, he'd made an effort to do what he could to keep himself fit in case he ever got his transfer. Yet, after ten hours of following Sarah around, he was exhausted. He knew part of that was because he hadn't slept at all the night before, but still, he had no idea being a bodyguard could be such tiring work.

And he wasn't even doing anything. There'd been no attacks, no crazy fans, nothing. After around hour five of trying to keep an eye on everybody who came near Sarah, he gave up. There were too many people, too much was going on, and his brain was fried. She talked to anybody and everybody that came near, and she always seemed to have a smile and know names, whereas he was sure that life had become something like an old Scooby-Doo cartoon, except that the people revolved and the scenery never did.

How had everything become routine to him already?

His phone vibrated, breaking the boredom and making him jolt. Bullworth's name on the viewscreen nearly made him weep with relief, but he kept it together as he answered. "Hello?"

"Bartowski, how are things going with whatever her name is, the actress?"

"Sarah Walker, sir." Finally, he was going to get some answers.

"Yeah, I don't care what her name is. Report, Bartowski."

Chuck frowned and walked off to the side, into a more secluded part of the soundstage. "Sir, didn't you read my e-mail? I sent you my preliminary findings earlier this morning."

"Bartowski, just give me the damn sitrep."

Chuck almost sighed. Of course Bullworth hadn't read his report. "Well, sir, as I said in my report, I haven't been able to identify Miss Walker's attacker, but she did report that the man called her the Cat at some point during the attack."

"Anything else?"

Anything else? He had just said that Sarah had possibly been called a rather infamous spy codename. That seemed like a pretty serious issue for the Agency, high profile victim or no. "I've been watching over Miss Walker almost every minute since I arrived, sir. I'm doing what I can to find her attacker and I've already taken some steps to improve her security."

He could just imagine Bullworth nodding his head. "That's good work, Bartowski."

"Yes, sir, thank you, sir. But back to what I was saying about the Cat, you do know I mean—"

"Keep me posted," Bullworth said, and hung up.

Chuck pulled his phone back and stared at it. What the hell? Had that really just happened? Apparently, it had. He was just as lost as he had been for nearly twenty-four hours now, and there seemed to be no way out. Frustrated, he shook his head and wandered back over to the crew.

The woman who'd greeted him the day before jogged up, still bearing the same clipboard and frazzled expression. "Hey, you're Sarah's new bodyguard, right?"

"Jaime, right?"

She smiled at him. "I am."

Chuck smiled back. "And I am, too. Sarah's bodyguard, I mean."

"I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but you look exhausted. Rough day?"

Chuck ran a hand through his hair and then yawned. "However could you tell?"

"Come on, Sarah's got a chair that she uses when she's not filming. You can rest for a bit. I don't think she'll mind."

Normally, he would have objected, but he was too tired to put up much of a fight. So after she pointed the chair out to him, he just walked over and collapsed onto it. "You're a lifesaver," he said. He let out a little moan as his body finally had a chance to rest. Sarah had good taste in chairs.

Jaime laughed again and said, "No problem." Her walkie squawked. "That's my cue, you gonna be alright here?"

"Oh yeah," Chuck said, "I'm gonna be fine."

He watched the hustle and bustle of the crew and felt himself slowly being lulled to sleep. His eyes closed and he almost managed to nod off when he heard, "Sleeping on the job, huh?"

For a minute, he was tempted to fake sleep and not answer. It seemed impossible that he would ever want Sarah Walker—Sarah _Walker_—to leave him alone, but right now, all he wanted was to nap. Possibly for a year. So he put his hands over his face and just mumbled, over and over again, "I need a new boss, I need a new job, I need a new boss, this isn't happening."

"You know, a lesser person might take offense at that."

Chuck lifted his head and peered at Sarah. "Good thing you're Sarah Walker, then."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Come on, let's go."

"Go where?"

"We caught a break. They want to get some shots of extras without the leads, so we've got a couple of hours before they need us back and I don't know about you, but I seriously need to get out of here. Also, I'm hungry and Neil dictates what I can eat from craft services."

At the mention of food, Chuck's stomach rumbled. Loudly. He flushed and Sarah nodded. "Ready to bust loose, bodyguard?"

"Should we really just leave?"

Sarah's eyes sparkled with fun. "Nobody'll miss us. And you really need some new clothes. We'll do that after dinner."

"Food does sound like a good—wait, what?"

But Sarah was already striding away, and he had to hurry to scramble out of her chair to catch up.

* * *

><p>"Look, Sarah Wal—Sarah. I told you, I've got my own clothes."<p>

Sarah held up a black button-down in front of his chest and tilted her head to the side as she considered. He really wished she'd stop doing that, as his system was already overloading as it was. It turned out Sarah Walker being adorable for two hours on end really could break one's brain. This was possibly one of the reasons he had a rule about not watching _Love, Reality, and Taxes_more than twice in a six-week period. Sarah's eyes cut up to his now. "With you?"

Chuck squirmed. "Well, no, not with me, with me. They're back in D.C. You know that."

"Uh-huh," Sarah said and held up another shirt. It was obvious that she wasn't listening.

He had quickly discovered that when Sarah set her mind to something, she did what was necessary to make her want come true. He had objected during the ride to the restaurant, during dinner, and on the way to the shop they were currently tearing through, and it had been like talking to a particularly stubborn brand of brick wall the whole time.

"It would take me an hour tops to go get my stuff from my sister's," Chuck said. "I told you I brought some nicer clothes with me. There's no need for us to go shopping."

"Neil said that you had to be with me 24/7. How can you do that and go get your stuff?"

"Come on, surely he didn't mean it _quite _so literally."

"He did. And no, I don't know why. I stopped trying to figure out the inner workings of Neil's mind the first time I took on Syd." She added another shirt to the pile in her arms. "Besides, you said that you only brought one nice outfit with you."

"Yes, but—"

She held up another shirt and just as quickly discarded it. "A single outfit isn't good enough, Chuck. You can't wear it every day and who knows how long you'll be here? We've still got weeks of filming left." Sarah shook her head and started walking toward the changing rooms. "I told you that I'm buying, it's the least I could do for ruining your vacation. Or Neil is, once I send him the bill."

He couldn't help it, he smiled back when she grinned, though his was not as genuine as hers. This whole situation was still a little too bizarre for him, like he had accidentally stepped into the _Twilight Zone_. "It doesn't really matter what I say, you're not going to listen, are you?"

"Now he gets it."

Chuck sighed and gave up. "Can I at least pick out my own clothes? I'm not six, you know."

She looked over her shoulder at him, eyeing him from head to toe in a way that made him want to turn red all over. "The nerd clothes are cute, don't get me wrong, but if your current outfit is any indication, I'm not exactly confident in your choices."

"Hey, what's wrong with my clothes? Not everybody can pull this look off, you know," he said. He tugged the front of his fake Bass Pro shirt out to emphasize his point.

Sarah smirked and raised an eyebrow. "Well, I hear nerd chic is in these days, so maybe you have a point."

"Ha. So what you're saying is that maybe I know what I'm doing after all."

"I wouldn't go that far." She foisted her pile of clothes off on him. "Come on, let's go try this stuff on. We've only got about an hour before we have to head back, and there are still so many departments we need to hit."

Chuck dutifully followed, watching in dismay as Sarah added still more clothes to the pile. It was quickly approaching a point where she was simply buying him a whole new wardrobe. He wondered if she was even aware of what she was doing. The last time he'd gone through this sort of thing, it had been at Stanford, and Ellie had taken the train up to see him and drag him suit-shopping for interviews. She'd trusted him to buy his own clothing ever since.

Sarah, however, was tearing through the store with a glee he hadn't seen since he and Morgan had come across a box of SNES games at a yard sale, marked at a quarter per game.

He didn't think Sarah would appreciate the comparison. Even if she didn't even know Morgan.

"Oh, this looks cute," Sarah said.

Chuck looked up. They were in the women's section now, thank God, so that meant whatever had caught her eye was for her and not for him.

Even though she'd no doubt look fabulous in whatever had caught her eye, his arms burned from holding the mountain of clothes that he would shortly be expected to try on. He was about to pointedly remind Sarah that they needed to keep going, when he spotted them.

At first he thought they were fans. It wouldn't have been the first time people had approached Sarah to ask for an autograph or to tell her how much they liked Sydney Dunham. But something about the this pair walked set off alarm bells. They just didn't look _right_. Maybe it was profiling, but the leather jacket and the stubby ponytail, and oh, yeah, the fact that the guy on the left looked like he could be on the defensive line of the Raiders, told Chuck something might be up.

"Uh, Sarah," he said, and instinctively moved to get between her and the men.

"Hmm?" She was still preoccupied with whatever had caught her eye.

"I think it would be a good idea if you were to maybe run for—"

He never finished his thought: a knife appeared in the hand of the man on the right, and both men leapt forward.

* * *

><p>Oh, just a note: as a courtesy to me, please keep your reviews limited to this story. I know you miss <em>Fates<em>. I know people think Chuck and Sarah should get together in _Fates_ faster than they are. That's great. Tell me over there. This story is _Curtain Call_, not _What Fates Impose._ **mxpw**, my cowriter, doesn't write _Fates_, so those reviews always make him feel left out. Thanks!


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N the First: **Expect to see updates happening a lot faster on this story. I regret moving it off of my blog, so I'm to the point where it's going to be a "throw it on ff-net and forget it" process. Here's Chapter Six. Enjoy.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Six<strong>

Just like they had said it would at the Farm, it happened quickly. The man on the right swooped toward Chuck. The ex-football player on the left went the other way. Chuck temporarily forgot about him, as the knife seemed so much more pressing.

The fluorescent lights didn't glint off of the knife. There was no _fwoosh_noise, no Michael Bay slow-mo effect. The man thrust at Chuck, intending to stab him in the gut.

Chuck had no intention of getting stabbed in the gut. He reacted instinctively. He stepped to the side, dropped the clothes in his left hand, and with his right hand attempted to shove his opponent's arm away.

He forgot about the clothes in his right hand.

There was a weird sort of ripping noise as the man's hand caught in a hanger, and the knife went through the clothes. Together, Chuck and the Knife-guy stared: the knife was stuck. Chuck looked at the clothes, back to the man's face, and at the clothes again before it occurred to him that he might want to do something. He slammed his left hand down, dislodging the knife and yanking the other man's hand down in the process. Before he really knew what he was doing, he pushed as hard as he could with both hands, like he was back on the playground and some bully was beating on Morgan and they needed to get away.

Knife-guy went tumbling backwards.

Sarah shrieked.

Even if he hadn't sat through _It Came from the Swamp_six times in a week, he'd have recognized that noise. And his response was just as instinctive. Chuck turned, already in motion, ready to offer aid, ready to do anything. He got a glimpse of Linebacker Dude, Sarah slung over his shoulder like a classic damsel in distress—before the toe of his Converse sneaker caught on the same clothes he'd dropped a second before.

It was almost like flying. Chuck's body went forward, sling-shotting him across the space between the dropped clothing and Sarah. He caught Linebacker Dude with his shoulder right into the small of his back, then fell to the ground at the man's feet. Linebacker Dude—and Sarah—crashed forward into a display, got tangled up with Chuck, and then crumpled to his knees.

Right on top of Chuck.

He saw stars.

He heard the voice of an angel.

He felt something try to punch a hole through his ribcage, felt something sharp batter against his shoulder. Stars exploded into supernovas when something pummeled against his jaw.

And two seconds later, he realized that the angel was swearing hard enough to make a soldier blush.

"Let me GO, you dirty, perverted, motherfu—ack, dammit, I said _let me go_!"

Linebacker Dude was apparently pretty spry for a monolith. As Chuck lay on the ground, panting and wheezing from the pressure of being crushed by actress and thug alike, said thug rolled off him to his feet, scooped up a struggling Sarah Walker by the waist, and took off running.

"Chuck!"

His name, shouted, cleared the fog. Chuck twisted and made a grab for Sarah's hand, as if he could somehow anchor her down. He got a handful of pant-leg instead.

Linebacker Dude flew forward, dropping Sarah onto her hands and knees in the process. As the ape-sized human hit the floor, there was a smack loud enough to make Chuck wince. Even as his brain chanted, _Run, run, grab Sarah and run, run, run, idiot, run!_he realized something: Linebacker Dude wasn't moving. At all.

And Linebacker Dude hadn't come alone. Chuck whirled and scrambled to his feet—ready to do what, he didn't know—but Knife-guy didn't pounce on him. Instead, the smaller, skinnier man shouted triumphantly and fished his knife from a pile of trousers. He straightened, knife out, and his eyes widened. They cut from Sarah (still swearing), to the unconscious Linebacker Dude, to Chuck, standing between him and Linebacker Dude.

And then he did the last thing Chuck expected: he said, "Screw this!" and ran for it.

What the _hell_?

"Oh, my God!" Sarah grabbed his arm and—also to his shock—began to pat him down. "Did he get you? Oh, God, he had a knife, did he cut you or—"

"No," Chuck said, and his voice sounded distant in his head. "No, he got caught in the—are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Sarah said. "Your nose is bleeding. You're bleeding! Here, take this—I thought you said he didn't get you!"

"He didn't," Chuck said, and blinked. The confusion didn't lessen at all when Sarah dug tissues out of her bag with a shaking hand and shoved them at him. "He just...ran."

"Yeah, no wonder. I'd have run, too." Because Chuck was just staring at the tissues, baffled, Sarah actually grabbed his wrist and jerked his hand next to his face, holding the tissues against his nose herself. "That was incredibly brave of you."

"What are you talking about?"

"I mean, I know you told me you were a nerd, but I never expected..."

"Wait, wait, you think that I did this?" Chuck stared at Sarah in complete astonishment as his brain finally latched the pieces together; why Knife-guy must have run, why Sarah was even now looking at him with a mixture of concern and admiration. "No, no, this wasn't me, this was—"

"Like I said, incredibly brave. But we need to get out of here. Now." Sarah looked around, but oddly enough, their fight and shouting hadn't drawn the attention of anybody nearby. Neither had the downed two-hundred-and-fifty-pound-man on the floor, apparently. It took all kinds to live in L.A. "If this sort of thing gets out, the tabs will have a field day."

"Yes, yes, you're right. Of course." Chuck grabbed Sarah's arm, intent on hustling her out of there and away from trouble as fast as he could. Three steps later, he abruptly stopped. "No, no, wait, I just have—here, use my camera, get a picture of his face so I can run it through the database later." He shoved his iPhone at Sarah and glanced around to make sure the coast was clear before bending warily over Linebacker Dude and rifling through his pockets. _Please don't wake up, please don't wake up. _

He found a wallet, grabbed the phone back from Sarah, took a picture of the license, made a mental note of the contents. The man's phone, he slipped into his own pocket. He didn't consider it robbery. The police would end up taking it anyway.

"Wow," Sarah said as Chuck continued to sift through pockets, hurrying and wiping his fingertips from various objects by rubbing them off with his pants. "They teach you that at...wherever you trained?"

"No, checking for loot's an old D&D trick." Chuck paused for a second. "And please forget I said that. C'mon, we've got to go."

It was a bold move that he would wonder at later, but he grabbed Sarah's hand and hauled her away. With his free hand, he dialed the home office, hoping that it wouldn't be one of the agents that picked up. _Please don't be Kellerman, please don't be Kellerman._

"Yo!" was probably not a government-appropriate greeting, but that was what he got. "Bullpen. Scotty at your service, what can I do you for?"

"Scotty, it's Chuck. I need a containment."

"I'm sorry, I thought you just said it's Chu—"

"Not the time," Chuck said, taking the steps of the escalator down two at a time to the ground level. All of his exhaustion was completely forgotten, though he'd probably crash like nothing else once the adrenaline wore off. Behind him, Sarah had no trouble keeping up. She also hadn't dropped his hand. "I need a clean-up crew at Heidelman's; track my phone to get the address, and put a rush on it, will you?"

"What, you kill somebody?"

"No. Maybe. I'm not sure."

"Wait, what?"

"Make sure they grab all surveillance, and send it to a location I'll text you in a minute. Use a secure line on this."

"On whose authority?" He could hear Scotty typing in the background, and nearly sagged with relief. A containment team would soon be en-route. Scotty was the second-best tech in the office.

"Bullworth's."

"_What_? Chuck, did you become a field agent and not tell us about it, man?"

"Not exactly. It's...complicated. How soon can the team be here?"

"They're rolling out now. ETA is twelve minutes."

"Thanks, Scotty."

"I want deets, man. Real deets."

"No can do."

"Aw, no fair," Scotty said, and hung up.

"Why does nobody bother to say good-bye anymore?" Chuck wondered at nothing as they headed toward the exit.

"Because modern society no longer believes it to be necessary." Sarah let go of his hand to grab something from a shelf—a little white stuffed teddy bear holding a heart.

Chuck stopped in his tracks to goggle. "You cannot possibly be thinking of shopping at a time like this."

"Trust me, even I'm not that shallow. But, look." Sarah pointed at the exit, through which Chuck could barely see the dark street beyond. He did, however, see the two SUVs with tinted windows parked across the street. Immediately, he drew himself up with a curse.

"Dammit! More of them?"

"Worse," Sarah said.

Chuck blinked. What on earth could be worse than thugs and muggers?

"Paparazzi," Sarah said, answering his unspoken question. "And if we go out there in a rush, without buying anything, no amount of 'containment' is going to do a thing."

"Oh, right."

"Do you have cash?"

"Uh, some, why?"

"Good, you can pay for this. All I have are credit cards, and it's best if there's no evidence we were here." Sarah shoved the bear at him. "I'll pay you back for it. C'mon, let's go."

Though the cashier gave them a funny look, possibly because Sarah was disheveled and Chuck was bleeding, there was no alert across the store and nobody shouted for security to stop them. "You want a bag?" the cashier asked.

"No, it's fine, we'll help save the environment." Chuck picked up the bear from the counter and realized for the first time exactly how unmanly it was. "Um, maybe you should hold this," he said, handing it to Sarah.

Hands now free, he quickly swiped his face to clear it of any last traces of blood. He didn't know much about the tabloids, but he knew enough to know he couldn't go outside still bleeding. Such a picture would probably be the top story of the day.

"I think you got it all," Sarah said. "Ready?"

He nodded and took a deep breath. "I think so."

They hit the doors together, hurrying a little faster than necessary. "You're absolutely sure it's paparazzi and not—"

A flashbulb exploded in his face, effectively answering that question.

* * *

><p>"My God," Chuck said, for the fourth or fifth time. He blinked heavily, but the afterimages didn't go away. "I think I'm blind. No, really, I'm fairly sure I've lost the use of my entire right eye. How do you live like this?"<p>

"You'd think the actress would be the melodramatic one of this duo," Sarah muttered under her breath, though in the orange-yellow light of the streetlamp, she looked a little pale herself. She sat in the passenger seat of his rental car, half of her purse in her lap. A handful of crumpled up tissues sat on the seat between them, mostly covered in Chuck's blood. Thankfully, the nosebleed had never been a gusher, but it'd started bleeding again near the end of their escape from the paparazzi. He definitely needed a new shirt now. There was a joke there somewhere, Chuck was sure, about clothes shopping causing one to need new clothes, but he just couldn't think of it. "That was only a couple of photogs, you know. Just wait until you see what it's like on the red carpet. Fans, photogs, reporters, all shouting your name, and meanwhile a thousand flashbulbs are going off. It's kind of a nightmare."

"I have no idea how you manage to stay classy, cool, or collected under those circumstances," Chuck said before he really thought about it.

Sarah grinned. "You think I'm classy, huh?"

Chuck sighed and rested his forehead against the steering wheel. "And to think it's been almost twenty minutes since I wanted to disappear through a hole in the ground," he said in a deadpan voice.

"It's okay. You can think I'm classy, I don't mind."

They'd made it back to the studio in one piece, and thanks to a little creative driving learned at the Farm, without their paparazzi ducklings in tow. Thanks to their abrupt exit of the department store, they were a little early for Sarah's second call-time, and neither really wanted to go sit in her trailer and wait until it was time to report to the make-up trailer. So they were in his car, just...sitting. It was as ordinary as it was surreal.

When he felt something touch his jaw, Chuck nearly leaped out the window. At the last minute, he stopped himself (a good thing: the window was currently closed, and he hadn't thought to get insurance on the rental). Part of it was that his entire jaw felt like it might burst into flame and the other part was that Sarah Walker—Sarah _Walker_—was touching him.

And he really, really needed to accept that this was his life now.

"Man, he got you pretty good. You're going to have a bruise there."

"I don't think it was him," Chuck said.

"You don't?"

"Yeah, he wasn't the one kicking and screaming."

"I was not scream—oh, God, that was me?" Sarah's eyes widened before she clapped a hand over her mouth. "I did that to you?"

"I'll consider it a war wound won with honor, madam," Chuck said gravely. When he tried to smile, he remembered exactly why that was a bad idea. "But you should know, I am now going to wince in sympathy for every single one of Sydney's enemies when she lands a punch."

"Hush, you. Oh, speaking of Sydney..." Sarah rolled her eyes when her cell phone went off. She sighed and showed him the view screen. "It's Vanessa. Time to get back to the daily grind. If she asks, I was in your car the whole time, studying my lines."

"Instead of playing hooky and getting attacked by men with knives? Check."

"Yeah. Hooky. Heh." They climbed out of the car and headed toward the soundstage doors together. "I'm going to have Neil's assistant get you some clothes."

Chuck nearly groaned. The one positive side of the whole attack had been that they'd left the mountain of clothing behind. "Doesn't Neil's assistant have better things to do than that? Since he or she is serving, you know, the all-powerful Neil?"

"Neil wants you tailing me—"

"With good reason, as we were both just jumped in a department store."

"Then he'll have to make some sacrifices, too. Besides, Amber's had to do stranger things, I'm sure. I'll text her your sizes, okay?"

"No, that's really not—"

But Sarah had already climbed into the make-up trailer, leaving him, as usual, talking to himself. Chuck stood where he was for a moment, staring up at the square of light from the window, before he sighed and dragged both hands through his hair. Though it probably wasn't smart, he took a seat right on the steps up to the door and unlocked his phone.

This time, Scotty's answer was a lot more professional. "Department Fourteen."

"Hey, it's Chuck."

"Calling for an update?"

"You know it."

"Well, your containment crew was apparently top-notch. Did their work, got the place scrubbed, surveillance swiped, everything you wanted. I've also got some details on your perp."

"Leonard Emerson, right?"

"Right. Couple of your prints were found on scene, sloppy, sloppy."

"Give me a break. It was an open attack in the middle of a department store in the evening. What was I supposed to do? What've you got on Emerson?"

"Um, Chuck..."

Chuck recognized the tone from his fellow nerd well. After all, Scotty had been the one to hack the CIA mainframe and get the results on his promotion, and had been the one to tell Chuck outright that his skills as a programmer and tech were too valuable to give him the field agent slot he'd earned. Now, Chuck sat up straight. "What is it?"

"I'm not authorized to give you that information."

"Why the hell not?"

"Easy, man, easy. You know, my heartburn..."

"Just tell me, Scotty," Chuck said. He wasn't quite growling, but he was close, he knew. To say it had been a long day would be the equivalent of calling Samus only a little kickass.

"I'm only authorized to give this info to the AIC." Scotty sounded apologetic.

"What? That's bull. _I'm_the AIC."

"As of twenty minutes ago, you're not. Sorry, man."

Chuck's head snapped up. Twenty minutes? He'd been relieved of Agent-in-Charge duties? That could only mean that Bullworth had... "Gotta go," he said suddenly into the phone. Since Sarah took nearly an hour in make-up anyway—a fact he'd learned the hard way far too early that morning—he took a risk and cut across the trailer village to her trailer. He didn't bother to knock, but instead barged right in.

And there he was, suit perfectly pressed and tailored, sipping from a Starbucks latté as he calmly regarded Chuck. His eyes were cornflower blue, his hair perfectly coiffed. He had the best record in the Agency for field ops and managed to top the PT scores every year. Bosses loved him, coworkers adored him.

And Chuck hated every fiber of his being.

"Hello, Analyst Bartowski. About time you arrived," Agent Brad Kellerman said. "Now let's talk about Sarah Walker."

* * *

><p><strong>AN the Second**: No, Kellerman is not like Bryce.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N the First:** Sorry for the accidental two-week delay in posting the chapters, but we appreciate your patience. When we last saw Chuck, he was facing off against a frenemy. How on earth will that play out? Wait no more!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 07<strong>

Later he'd blame it on residual adrenaline or exhaustion or perhaps just insanity, but Chuck's first reaction wasn't his usual deference. He didn't hold his tongue. He didn't even keep quiet. Instead, he blurted out the only thing that he was really thinking at that moment: "I don't need a replacement."

Kellerman stopped mid-sip. "What was that, Analyst Bartowski?"

"I said that I don't want to be replaced. Things are fine here, it's handled." Realizing that he was still half in and half out of the trailer, Chuck straightened and stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind him.

"Not really your call."

Again, deference was nowhere to be found. "Even so, I'd like a chance to talk to Bullworth. Things have...changed."

Kellerman set his latte down on Sarah's coffee table, ignoring the coasters, and reached into his suit jacket.

Chuck managed to catch the folder that flew his way a second later, though not as smoothly as any of the field agents in the office would have. He fumbled to open it, all thumbs. "What's this?"

"Walker's attacker."

Indeed, the file contained a condensed rap sheet for one Joey "Shiny Toes" Dettweiler. There was a picture that matched Sarah's description fairly accurately, though the mug shot had a sneering quality she'd neglected to mention. Still, the scar she'd described was there, even if the gladiator haircut wasn't. Dettweiler also had a long list of priors, from aggravated assault to armed robbery.

"Excellent," Chuck said, ignoring the dread in his stomach in favor of sheer relief. Finding at least one of Sarah's attackers meant there were fewer people after her, which automatically meant she was safer. "Now we can find out why he attacked Sarah."

"Or not. Keep reading."

Chuck thumbed ahead and almost dropped the file when he spotted it. Page twelve contained a picture of Dettweiler—or at least, Chuck had to assume it was Dettweiler. It was hard to tell with most of the face missing and the—he counted—three broken fingers. And from the looks of the picture, the fingers were the least of it.

He tore his gaze away from the photo, had a brief and disturbing vision where he relived the very nice dinner Sarah had bought for the two of them. Shiny Toes Dettweiler's last hours on earth had been far from pleasant.

And now that she wasn't around to muddle his thoughts, Chuck could see Sarah's trailer really was rather homey.

"Still squeamish, I see," Kellerman said, brushing a bit of lint off of his suit jacket.

Chuck ignored the barb and set the file down. "What happened to him? Apart from the obvious?"

"He was found at the bottom of the L.A. River about four hours ago. With his face all…" Kellerman waved his hand at the folder. "Well, let's just say not pretty and leave it at that. You can imagine how anxious Bullworth was that I get here as soon as possible."

Chuck sighed and ran a hand through his hair, wincing when it came away greasy. On top of everything, he needed a shower. It figured. "So you got here as soon as possible, I'm gathering."

"With news of this second attack, Bullworth was even more convinced that Walker would need somebody with a little more experience watching over her." Kellerman smirked and added, "Definitely one assignment I won't mind taking very seriously."

Chuck's hand clenched into a fist, thankfully out of Kellerman's line of sight. He was standing like some damned rookie trainee, he realized, practically at parade rest in front of a superior. With deliberate casualness, he took a seat on the only other chair in the room apart from the couch. "Sarah's not going to like that, I can tell you up front."

"Well, my job is not to be concerned with Walker's feelings, Bartowski, it's to keep her alive." Kellerman leaned forward and Chuck could hear the lecturing tone enter the other man's voice. It was the same tone that Kellerman had used back at the Farm when they were going through training together. It rankled even more now than it had then. "And for the record, this is exactly why you've always been consistently turned down for field agent."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Hey, I'm just trying to help you out."

"With what?" Chuck asked, exasperation bleeding into his tone.

"See, that. Exactly that. You're too personal, Bartowski, and it shows. Your asset is your asset, and nothing more. Talking about what she likes and doesn't like, worrying about her feelings—you can't do that, not in the line of duty."

"Okay, thanks for the career advice, Kellerman, but—"

"And that's," Kellerman went on, as though Chuck hadn't spoken at all, "why I've always recommended you stay in the lab where you belong."

Chuck's fist clenched again. They'd been at Camp Peary at the same time, Kellerman and him, though Kellerman was a year or two older. Politicking and sheer luck had allowed Kellerman to move up the ranks in Department Fourteen, while Chuck did the same—as an analyst. Now, Kellerman was the only thing standing between Chuck and field agent status. Chuck needed Kellerman's endorsement for field work, and he'd never gotten it. No matter how many times he petitioned, no matter how his scores were or how clearly he wanted it, Kellerman never said yes. The other man always claimed it was for his own good.

Now, when it was just the two of them in some tiny trailer on a Hollywood lot, with none of the bosses and other agents around, Chuck wanted nothing more than to deck the other man. Given the fact that he wasn't at all prone to violence, it was as disarming as it was empowering. Still, Chuck forced himself to speak evenly. "I can do the job, sir. I'm qualified."

"You think Bullworth is going to entrust the care of somebody with as high a public profile as your little actress friend to a rookie field agent with no practical field experience?" Kellerman stood up and straightened his suit. "You did your best, and the Agency appreciates you stepping up in the meantime, but you're relieved. Go back to your vacation, Chuck."

"No."

Kellerman stopped on his way out of Sarah's trailer and turned, very slowly. "Excuse me? That was not a request."

Oh, frak. He'd never heard Kellerman's voice go so cold before, even though other agents had talked about the Iceman a time or two—when Kellerman couldn't hear, of course. "What I meant was that I can help you, sir. You'll need a team, and you could use my," Chuck swallowed back the distaste at his next word, "expertise."

Kellerman never got a chance to reply, since at that moment, the door burst open. Kellerman twitched for his gun, Chuck's hands went up in a very loose kung fu defensive stance.

It was only Sarah.

"Chuck!" Her eyes were wide; the makeup somehow making her look both wholly like Chuck was used to seeing her and completely unlike herself. "There's a..." Her eyes tracked to Kellerman, and narrowed. It wasn't hard to see her taking in Kellerman's G-man appearance and instantly cataloguing him as such. "Problem. Who's this? What are you doing in my trailer?"

"That's Kellerman," Chuck said glumly.

"I'm Brad Kellerman," Kellerman said with a gleaming smile. He walked over to Sarah and stuck out his hand. Sarah shook it, but she was looking at Chuck the whole time. "I'm your bodyguard."

It was almost comical how fast Sarah's head spun back toward Kellerman. "Excuse me?"

Kellerman's smile faded just a bit. "The agency sent me as a replacement for Mr. Bartowski. He was always supposed to be a temporary solution, as he isn't qualified for this type of work."

Temporary. That was all it took to make Chuck remember everything that had happened. As much as he wanted to object solely on the grounds of disliking Kellerman, the other man was right. Chuck wasn't a bodyguard, not really. What happened at Heidelman's had been pure chance. Put in the same situation seven different times, Sarah would probably be kidnapped and Chuck would be a Chuck-kabob.

Sarah stepped fully into the trailer, a wary look on her face. "Wait a second. Your agency sent me a temporary bodyguard?"

"I tried to tell you that," Chuck started to say, but Sarah held up a hand to stop him.

"Well, yes, Mr. Bartowski's services were supposed to serve as sort of a stopgap, if you will, until a more experienced agent could take his place." Kellerman paused, thought about it for a second, and added, "Ma'am."

"So you sent a stopgap to protect me after I'd been attacked? I can see your 'agency' takes my safety very seriously."

"We do, ma'am."

Chuck's eyes narrowed. Why did he get the feeling that there was some sort of...trap coming? Chewie was about two seconds away from grabbing for the Ewok meat, though Sarah's face was perfectly devoid of any emotion.

"It doesn't seem that way to me. It sounds to me like you're saying that your agency sent an under qualified temporary agent to protect me after I was point-blank attacked by somebody who sounds like a lot more than a crazy fan."

Chuck's head snapped up. Sarah had been positive that Shiny Toes Dettweiler was nothing more than an obsessed fanboy. Why the change now?

"That's not inspiring a whole lot of confidence, as you can see," Sarah continued, staring at Kellerman.

It was the closest to squirming Chuck had ever seen the agent. "That's not exactly what I meant—"

"What did you mean?"

"You've been perfectly safe this whole time, I promise," Kellerman said, putting on the reassuring smile he had once used to woo the entire female half of a training class at Camp Peary.

"You just insinuated that Mr. Bartowski is under qualified."

"I assure you," Kellerman said, sounding a bit like he was chewing on glass, "Mr. Bartowski is perfectly fine where it counts."

"Excellent." A breathtaking smile broke over Sarah's face, making both men blink. "I'll keep him as my bodyguard, then."

"Wait, what?" Kellerman asked.

A second later, Chuck's brain caught up with him. "Wait, what?" he echoed.

"I've just gotten used to the idea of having one bodyguard follow me around all the time. I'm not introducing another stranger into my life, Mr. Kellerman. Chuck stays, and you can thank your agency all the same for me."

Kellerman, possibly sensing that his control of the situation had derailed the minute Sarah had entered, held up both hands for peace. "Now, Miss Walker, I understand your private life is important to you. And I'm sure Bartowski did an adequate job standing in for me, but I'm who Bullworth intended to send in the first place. You can trust me; I'm very good at my job."

"If that's true, then why weren't you—no, you know what? Chuck did better than an 'adequate' job. He saved me."

"I understand you feel some gratitude for Mr. Bartowski's, er, rescue this evening, but I assure you, he has other strengths. And with your contract with the studio, you don't have much of a choice in the—what are you doing?"

"Calling Neil and seeing what he has to say about this." Sarah pressed a few buttons and held her phone to her ear. "Hi, Amber, it's Sarah Walker. I need to speak to Neil. Sure I'll hold."

To Chuck's surprise, Kellerman actually paled. "Hold on there, that's not really necessary, I'm sure we can…"

"Besides, haven't you heard? Chuck's my new boyfriend."

Chuck shook his head vigorously, trying to stop everything from spinning and being confusing. The world needed to make sense. "I'm sorry," he said to no one in particular, "I thought I was finally done hallucinating crazy things."

"Not a hallucination."

"Is he okay?" Kellerman asked Sarah. Or at least Chuck thought he had. It was hard to tell what was real and what was only happening in his head. He was pretty sure he had imagined Sarah saying he was her boyfriend. And now it felt strangely as though he were watching the world from inside a fish-bowl, where his vision was distorted and his hearing was underwater and—had Sarah really said Chuck's my new boyfriend? Sure, he'd daydreamed, once or twice, maybe a few times, but...had she really said that?

He pinched himself. And now his arm hurt.

"Oh, he's fine. He does this every once in a while. You get used to it after the third or fourth time."

"I think I need—wait, no, something's not right." Chuck shook the fog away to find Kellerman staring at him as though he'd sprouted a third arm. Sarah simply looked tolerantly amused. "You said I wasn't hallucinating."

"You're not."

"But you said I'm your new boyfriend."

"I did."

"How the hell is that not a hallucination?"

Sarah waved at him. After a second, he realized she was gesturing for him to pull his phone out, so he did so. "It may be a long story, but apparently my new 'mystery beau' is breaking news at TMZ. Bridget says it's all over the other gossip sites now, too."

Bridget did Sarah's make-up, Chuck knew. She had two kids and a Boston Terrier named Max, all of which were kept in snapshots at the edges of her makeup mirror. And he had no idea why he was thinking of Bridget at a time like this.

"You're an actress, I'm sure you're seen with different men all the time," Kellerman said. "I don't think that will be a problem for us."

Chuck actually winced at the ferocity of Sarah's glare and it wasn't even directed at him.

"Just who the hell do you think I—Oh, hi, Neil!" Sarah's voice transformed from outrage to calm and pleasant, but Chuck could see she was still glaring out of the corner of his eye.

"Miss Walker, please, I didn't mean anything with my comment," Kellerman tried to save, but Chuck could tell Sarah wasn't even listening.

From that point on, it went all downhill for Agent Brad Kellerman.

* * *

><p>The trailer was silent as the door closed behind Kellerman. Chuck didn't know what to say. He was still a little bewildered. He knew Sarah was a formidable woman, but the way she had argued with Neil earlier…well, truthfully, he was a little scared of her at the moment.<p>

"What's this nonsense about you not being a real bodyguard?"

Chuck jumped a bit as Sarah's voice broke the silence. He wasn't sure if he was authorized to tell Sarah he was CIA, but even so, the only reason he hadn't confessed the truth already was because he feared her reaction. After everything that had happened, after she had just fought to keep him on as her bodyguard, it felt like a betrayal to tell her he was nothing but an analyst who spent all his time in computer labs.

"You seemed like a real bodyguard back at Heidelman's. And God, how smarmy could that guy be?"

Chuck opened his mouth to say something in response, but Sarah steamrolled on.

"I'll have you know that I haven't been on a date in months. For one thing, who has the time? I've been in Europe for most of the year, working eighteen-hour days. The least people could do is cut me a break. And I'm not one of those actresses who seemingly have a new boyfriend every other week." She was glaring at him now, almost as fiercely as she had glared at Kellerman, like this was his fault. He stared helplessly back at her. At that moment, he wanted to be just about anywhere else. "I have a reputation, damn it! I liked my life just the way it was."

"Uh, Sarah?"

"I mean, yeah, sure. I'm friends with Carina Miller and I guess the 'tramp' smell rubs off according to some of the tabloids, but I didn't ask for this. No offense, but I don't want a bodyguard at all. I especially don't want a fake boyfriend. And why is this happening? I just don't understand why these people are after me," Sarah said.

Even though part of him was marveling that she hadn't taken a single breath during her whole soliloquy, Chuck scrambled out of his seat and onto the couch. He had none of Kellerman's grace (he tripped over his own shoelace), but Sarah didn't seem to mind when he tentatively put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She simply went still and turned to face him. "I promise I will do everything I can to keep you safe, Sarah."

Sarah nodded her head jerkily and took a deep breath. She rose from the couch, out of his reach, and visibly composed herself. "They're going to need me on set soon, so I need to go. I'll get one of the guards to walk me there. Try and take a nap or something, it's going to be a long night."

He must have looked really bad for her to say something, but Chuck just nodded. "Okay. I'll take a power nap and come join you on set."

"Deal." At the doorway, Sarah paused. "You mean that, don't you? That you'll do everything you can."

"Of course." Chuck couldn't stop the full Bartowski grin, though he'd always suspected it made him look like more of a nerd than ever. "Everything I can. Scout's honor."

"Thank you, Chuck," Sarah said and then she was gone, disappearing into the evening beyond the trailer.

For a moment, he didn't move. Sarah's presence had a way of filling the room so much—maybe it was just him—that whenever she left, it felt like it always took the very air a moment to reacquire equilibrium. Belatedly, Chuck realized he was still holding his phone, which Sarah had told him to get out. She'd wanted him to see something, he remembered. But what? Oh, right. He pulled up TMZ on his phone and thumbed through it—and was suddenly very, very glad he was already sitting down.

Man, the paparazzi could work fast. There was a picture of Sarah holding his hand as they left Heidelman's, and the damning evidence in her other hand: a small white teddy bear.

Oh, hell.

Bullworth was going to burst a blood vessel over this. Now Sarah was expecting him to protect her, and Bullworth would be forced to accept that as well. He'd made a promise he would do everything he could to keep Sarah safe, especially now that he really was her real bodyguard. But he knew he couldn't do this on his own. He could modify Sarah's security system all he wanted, he could scour hours of security footage, and turn Emerson's phone inside and out, but the Farm had never really prepared him for a job like this. He was going to need help, and he wasn't turning to Kellerman this time.

"Think, Chuck, think." Who could help him out that wasn't part of Department Fourteen? He didn't want to deal with more condescending ridicule, but he needed help.

When the answer hit, he nearly groaned. But he didn't have much of a choice, so he grabbed his wallet from his back pocket, fished around inside of it, and pulled out a simple white business card. When he dialed the hand-written number, it rang twice before somebody answered with a "What do you want?"

"Hi, I'm, uh, looking for Major John Casey."

"Who is this? How did you get my private number?"

Chuck readjusted his grip on his phone, his hand suddenly sweaty. "Um, it's Chuck Bartowski, sir. You said I should call you whenever I wanted to call in my favor. Well, this is me. Calling it in. I need your help."


End file.
